NRC: Mamata urges Centre to amend Citizenship Act; dares BJP

Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has urged the Centre to make an urgent amendment to the Citizenship Act to ensure that those excluded from the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam are not deprived of their civil rights.

She has also hit out at the BJP for thundering that it will initiate an Assam-like NRC update in Bengal if the party comes to power in the state. Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh made the announcement yesterday.

The Chief Minister called on the Union home minister Rajnath Singh at his residence this evening and communicated her concerns to him over the exclusion of nearly 40-lakh people, mostly Bengalis, from the final draft of the NRC in Assam.

Emerging out of the meeting, Banerjee told news-persons that what is happening in the name of NRC update in Assam is not good and this may have grave fallout in other states in the country.

“Those who took shelter in India as refugees (as a fallout of the Partition) should not be turned into refugees again,” she said.

The Chief Minister asked in what capacity BJP is talking of initiating an NRC update in Assam.

“Big big talks cannot give you the solutions. Let them first tackle the 2019 elections. Who are they to decide the fate of West Bengal? West Bengal government is there and we will not allow this (sort of) vulgarism or nuisance in Bengal,” she maintained.

Banerjee said that if NRC update was transparent and faultless then why the family members of late President of the country Fakruddin Ali Ahmed have been excluded from the NRC in Assam.

“Who will reply this? What an audacity is this! Can this happen that those who support BJP are Indians and those who don’t are not?” she asked.

Earlier in the day, while speaking at an event at the Constitution Club in Delhi, the Bengal CM said that if anyone thinks that by raising her voice against the “biased” NRC update in Assam she was doing a blunder, she will still do such blunder. “I am not ready to excuse all this. I cannot imagine this is happening in a democratic country,” she said.

A delegation of Trinamool MPs is scheduled to visit Assam tomorrow to assess the situation there post the publication of the draft NRC and talk to those whose names have been dropped.

NEWSMEN is an online news portal focused on news and views from Bengal and the Bengali / Bengal diaspora spread all over. Coinciding with the 73rd anniversary of the Quit India Movement, NEWSMEN went live over the world-wide-web on 09 August 2015.